the grateful animals and the ungrateful man. an oriental exemplum and its derivatives...

M i c h a e l C h e s n u t t , K o p e n h a g e n

The Grateful Animals and the Ungrateful Man

An Oriental Exemplum and its Derivativesin Medieval European Literary Tradition

In his Collectanea de rebus Britannicis the Tudor scholar and royal antiquaryJohn Leland (d. 1552) has a series of excerpts "ex annalibus Matthaei Parisien-sis, monachi S. Albani" covering the period from the death of Henry II to theyear 12531. In the last paragraph of the entry for 1191, immediately followinga reference to "Magister Joannes de Cella Prior Cellse de Walingford" (i.e.John de Cella, Abbot of St Albans 1195—1214), we find the following notice:

Apologus de mercatore Veneto, e spelunca una cum leone & dracone per rusti-cum liberato2.

A comparison with the Greater Chronicle or Chronica majora of St Albans, acompilation by Matthew Paris of which the original manuscripts are preservedin Corpus Christi College Cambridge and the British Library, shows that Le-land has omitted the date 1195 before the reference to John de Cella, for theentry in the Chronicle for 1195 includes a report of John's succession to theabbacy in that year8, and the Apologue of the Venetian merchant appears atthe end of the same entry under the rubric De Vitali Veneto opertim ingra-torum redargtitio4. The passages in question are of particular interest becausethey appear in the original manuscript, Corpus Christi College Cambridge 16,on the first of two conjunct leaves (fol. 11 sq.) which were written by MatthewParis himself and inserted in place of a single discarded leaf6. Leland was

1 Hearne, T. (ed.): Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii de Rebus Britannicis Collectanea 3.Oxford 1715, 335—341. It would appear that the manuscript of Matthew Parisconsulted by Leland was not in the St Albans library when Leland visited itc. 1535. This agrees well enough with the assumption that the manuscript inguestion was Matthew's original, now Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 16,for the latter was in the possession of Robert Talbot, prebendary of Norwich, to-wards the middle of the sixteenth Century. See Madcfen, F. (ed.): Matthaei Pari-siensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Historia Anglorum (Rolls Series 44) 1. London1866, xv-xvii, and James, M.: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in theLibrary of Corpus Christi College Cambridge 1. Cambridge 1912, 55.

2 Hearne 3 (above, not. 1) 336.3 Luard, H. (ed.): Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica majora

(Rolls Series 57) 2. London 1874, 411.4 Luard 2 (above, not. 3) 413—416.5 Luard 2 (above, not. 3) 410, not. 2; cf. Vaughan, R.: Matthew Paris (Cambridge

Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, n.s. 6). Cambridge 1958, 53. The mainhand of Corpus Christi College Cambridge 16, which is the hand in whidi fol.11 sq. are written, was originally identified äs Matthew's autograph by Madden inhis introduction (Madden, äs above, not. 1); this view was disputed oy T. DuffusHardy, whose authority is accepted by James l (above, not. 1) 50 and 54, but ithas since been vindicated by Vaughan in his paper The handwriting of MatthewParis. In: Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society l (1949—53)376—394.

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The Grateful Animals and the Ungrateful Man 25

under the false Impression that Matthew Paris was the author of the GreaterChronicle from the death of Henry II onwards6, whereas it is now knownthat the portion down to 1234—35 is taken over from Matthew's predecessorRoger Wendover and that Matthew's own original work only commences there-after7; but a collation of the entry for 1195 with the text of Wendover —whidi in its turn was based on the work of the twelfth-century author Ralphde Diceto — reveals that the material whidi caught Leland's eye was in factadded by Matthew on his own initiative. It was not subsequently repeated inthe Historia Anglorum, an abridgement of the Greater Chronicle on whidiMatthew commenced work in the year 12508.

The Apologue of the Venetian is introduced by Matthew in connexion withthe erTorts of King Richard I to persuade his reluctant subjects to answer thePope's call for a new Crusade:

Cum haec [a letter of Pope Celestine III to the English hierardiy] autem adregis notitiam pervenissent, ipse promta devotione animatus alios strenuos adopus crucis, maxime quos multipliciter exaltaverat, alacriter animabat, per-suadens ut tarn pro ipsius regis salute, quam ecclesias promotione, et propriarumanimarum salute, ad laborem prsedictum accingi non pigritarentur. Et ut quos-dam huic salubri admonitioni rebelies civilius reprehenderet, praedicatoris for-mam induens, hanc frequenter parabolam circumsedentibus replicavit9.

The story is thus claimed to have been a favourite with the king himself; andthe source of Matthew's Information on this point is clearly stated in a margi-nal note at the beginning of the apologue, whidi is there described äs

Apologus Ricardi regis quem abbati Sancti Albani Guarino et ipse nobisenarravit10.

The Guarinus mentioned in this note is Warin, abbot of St Albans 1183—1195and immediate predecessor of John de Cella; his intimacy with the king isemphasized in the Chronicle in a passage describing Ridiard's return fromcaptivity in 1194 and the gifts whidi Warin gave him on that occasion11.There is therefore every reason to believe that Matthew's source quotation isgenuine, and that we here have an authentic example of a tale told by theEnglish king at his court in the last decade of the twelfth Century. We maybegin with a summary of the tale äs Matthew reports it.

A ridi and avaricious man, Vitalis of Venice, goes hunting on the eve of hisdaughter's marriage. He falls into a pit designed to trap wild animals (foveamet pedicam, leonibus, ursis, et lupis subtiliter prasparatam), where he finds aHon and a huge serpent already imprisoned; but he blesses himself with thesign of the Cross and the animals do him no härm. The next day he is dis-

Cf. the marginal note ppposite his first excerpt: "Lelandus. Ultimus annus regniHenrici 2. Matthaeo initium est historiae", Hearne 3 (above not. 1) 335.

7 See Vaughan (above, not. 5) di. II, especially 28—30.8 Madden (above, not. 1) 2. London 1866, 55 sq.; cf. Vaughan (above, not. 5) di. IV.* Luard 2 (above, not. 3) 413. The word "pigritarentur" in the fifth line is a cor-

rection of the erroneous "pegritareatur" in the printed edilion.10 Luard 2 (above, not. 3) 413 sq.11 Luard 2 (above, not. 3) 403.

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26 Michael Chesnutt

covered by a poor charcoal burner who is out collecting wood, and he promisesthe poor man half his worldly goods if he will rescue him from his predicament.The charcoal burner hastens hörne and fetches a rope ladder (scalam cum funi-culis) which he lets down into the pit; and no sooner has he done so than theanimals ascend, making enthusiastic signs of gratitude to their rescuer (circum-euntes pedes ejus volutabantur coram eo Isetabundi, quasi gratiarum actionespro liberatione sua referentes eidem). Vitalis then emerges and the poor mangreets him eagerly, seizing his hand and kissing it and enquiring when he mayexpect to receive his promised reward. Vitalis departs, telling him to come tohis palace at Venice within three days, and the poor man returns home to hissupper. When he is seated at table the lion appears carrying a young mule (hin-nulum) äs a token of its gratitude, and when the astonished human being followsit back to its den it fawns upon him äs before (ludentem coram eo et lingentempedes ejus). No sooner has the poor man returned to his meal than the serpentappears and the same pattern of events repeats itself; the serpent's gift is evenmore remarkable, however, than that of the lion, for it is a precious jewel(gemmam pretiosam).The charcoal burner reports in due course to Vitalis' palace, where he finds acelebration in progress for the deliverance of the master of the house. The lattercynically denies all knowledge of his benefactor and commands his householdservants to lock him up (praecepit familiae suae ut caperetur, quasi delirans, protanta temeritatc incarcerandus), but the poor man escapes and lays a complaintagainst Vitalis with the city's judges, showing them the serpent's jewel äs proofof the truth of his story; and one of the citizens who recognizes its value (unuscivium, quem virtus lapidis non latebat) buys the jewel from him for a handsomeprice. As further proof of his veracity the charcoal burner conducts a numberof citizens to the lairs of the two animals, who greet him with signs of recogni-tion. Thus convinced of the truth of the matter the judges compel Vitalis tofulfil his promise. "The bountiful King Richard often told this story äs a rebuketo the ungrateful."

This is only one of several occurrences in medieval English sources of thestory of the Grateful Animals; Ungrateful Man (AaTh 160). It also appearsin the vernacular in Book V, lines 4937—5162 of Gower's Confessio amantis(completed between the years 1390 and 1393)12, and in the translation — ortranslations — of the Gesta Romanorum made in the course of the fifteenthCentury, probably in the reign of King Henry VI13. Parallel texts occur in the

12 Macaulay, G. (ed.): The Complete Works of John Gower 3. Oxford 1901, 81—87.13 Herrtaee, S.: The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum [...] re-edited

from the MSS. in British Museum (Harl. 7333 & Addit. 9066) and UniversityLibrary, Cambridge (Kk. 1.6) [...] (Early English Text Society, Extra Series 33).Repr. London 1962, 279—294. The story is not found in the fragmentary text ofthe Gesta recently published by Sandred, K.: A Middle English Version of theGesta Romanorum edited from Gloucester Cathedral MS 22 (Acta UniversitatisUpsaliensis: Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia 8). Uppsala 1971. The latter is charac-terized by Brewer, D.: Observations on a fifteenth-century manuscript. In: Anglia72 (1954) 391, äs independent of the texts edited by Herrtage, an opinion appa-rently accepted without significant modification by Sandred in his preface (p. 7)but later contested in his notes to the text (p. 108). Herrtage himself treated therenderings in Harl. 7333 and Add. 9066/Kk. 1.6 äs separate translations of theLatin original (EETS edition, xix sq.); his views on the matter are taken over bySandred (p. 10), but a detailed comparison of random passages from the textswould not tend to support this Interpretation.



The Grateful Animals and the Ungrateftd Man 27

numerous Latin manuscripts of the Gesta, which is a collection of legends,anecdotes, fahles and other tales drawn from classical Roman and medievalsources: the ultimate provenance of the collection has not yet been established,but its kernel would seem to have been assembled by the beginning of thefourteenth Century and from the latter part of the same Century a distinctlyEnglish branch of the Latin textual tradition can be discerned. These Anglo-Latin manuscripts of the Gesta, which must of course represent the source ofthe extant Middle English versions, have unfortunately never been edited14.For purposes of comparison with the English vernacular texts we have there-fore to content ourselves with the Innsbruck manuscript from 134215, which isone of the earliest copies — and certainly the earliest dated — of the LatinGesta, and with the eclectic and somewhat inferior text published by Oester-ley in 187216.

Gower's Confessio amantis and the Gesta Romanorum both display sub-stantial divergences from Matthew Paris not only in matters of detail but alsoin the structure of the story. Whereas Matthew places the animals' manifes-tations of gratitude before the poor man's dispute with the nobleman, in Gowerand the Gesta the order of these episodes is reversed. The poor hero, namelessin Matthew Paris, is called B a r d u s in Gower and G w i d o or Guy inGesta Romanorum; in both versions he is accompanied to the forest by an ass.The rieh man is supplied in the Innsbruck text of Gesta Romanorum with thesymbolic name I n g r a t u s ; in the Middle English Gesta he is calledL e n t i c u l u s and in Gower A d r i a n . His daughter's marriage is notmentioned äs a reason for his visit to the forest, but Gesta Romanorum confersadditional irony on his Situation and subsequent conduct by means of a pre-amble in which he is provided with a previous history: he himself had beenraised from poverty by the generosity of the emperor, and he had himself

14 Relevant extracts from MS Harl. 5369 (collated with MS Bodley 123) are printedby Sandred äs an appendix to his edition of the Gloucester manuscript (abovc,not. 13), and Herrtage has a discussion of the Anglo-Latin manuscripts known tohim in the introduction to the EETS volume (above, not. 13). See also the editionby Oesterley (not. 16 below) and Herbert, J.: Catalogue of Romances in theDepartment of Manuscripts in the British Museum 3. London 1910, 183—190.

15 Innsbruck, Universitätsbibliothek Cod. lat. 310; Dick, W. (ed.): Die Gesta Roma-norum. Nach der Innsbrucker Handschrift vom Jahre 1342 und vier MünchenerHandschriften (Erlanger Beiträge zur englischen Philologie 7). Erlangen/Leipzig1890. The story of the grateful animals appears on p. 86—92.

18 Oesterley, H.: Gesta Romanorum. Berlin 1872. This edition contains 283 items,of which the last 102 are drawn from various unspecified manuscript sources whilethe first 181 (the so-called "Vulgärtext") are taken from the earliest printed edi-tions of the Latin Gesta, which were issued at Utrecht and Cologne c. 1472—73(cf. Oesterley, 266—268). The story of the grateful animals appears here onp. 463—466; it concludes with a "Moralizacio" corresponding to the "Moralite"or "Declaracio" at the end of the Middle English copies (see below, p. 30). Thecorresponding morai conclusion or "reductio" is omitted by Dick from his editionof the Innsbruck manuscript, which is closer in certain respects to the MiddleEnglish renderings than is the text printed by Oesterley.



28 Michael Chesnutt

commanded the animal trap to be dug17. The setting of the story is Rome, notVenice18, and the animals in the pit include an ape äs well äs a serpent: inGesta Romanorum the Hon also appears, making three animals in all, while inGower the lion is omitted. Gesta Romanorum agrees with Matthew Paris inmentioning the presence of the animals immediately, whereas Gower suppressesall reference to them until the commencement of the rescue, thus creating acomic Situation in whidi the poor man is astonished by the sight of the ani-mals emerging and thinks that he has seen "a jape / Of faierie" (lines5002 sq.). In both versions the rescue is effectuated by means of a cord letdown into the pit; Gesta Romanorum agrees with Matthew Paris in sendingthe poor man home to fetch the rescue equipment — a motif omitted byGower — and in the pleasing detail of the signs of gratitude made by the lionand the serpent19, whereas Gower agrees with Matthew Paris in making therieh man offer half his goods to the hero and bless himself with the sign of theCross20, both points that are missing in the Gesta. Neither version, however,includes Matthew Paris* detail of the hero seizing the rieh man's hand when heemerges from captivity. Gower is alone in assigning to the ass the duty ofhelping his master to pull the animals and the rieh man up to the surface.On the other hand, the Latin Gesta of the Innsbruck manuscript and theearly prints provides its own comic relief by emphasizing the role of therieh man's horse: the latter falls into the pit beside him, and the last stageof the rescue consists in hauling it out so that its owner can ride home incomfort. The Middle English Gesta has no corresponding episode, and it waspresumably not present in the Anglo-Latin source21.

The versions in Confessio amantis and Gesta Romanorum now depart fromthe common path which they have followed up to this point, and it will beconvenient to consider their continuations of the story separately. In the

17 The first part of this preamble is omitted in Oesterley's text, whidi also spoils thepoint concerning the digging of the pit by making the emperor and not the villainof the piece responsible for it. The villain has no name in this text, whidi merelyrefers to him by the titles "miles" and "senescallus".

18 Rome is only mentioned explicity in the English texts. In the English Gesta theemperor is named "Ciclades" or "Inclides"; in the Innsbruck manuscript he isnamed "Leuncius" (perhaps scribally related to the name "Lenticulus" in theEnglish manuscripts?), while in Oesterley's text he is anonymous.

19 "Hoc facto leo applausum ei fecerat", Dick (above, not. 15) 88/14 sq.; "whenf>e lion was vp, he maad a maner of ioivng to him", Herrtage (above, not. 13)283/1 (here and elsewhere I cite the Middle English text of MS Harl. 7333, sincethe variants of Add. 9066/Kk. 1.6 are insignificant for the purposes of the presentstudy). — The serpent makes similar obeisance but the ape does not. So also in thetext printed by Oesterley.

20 "[...] and whan it [Bardus* cord] cam / To him, this lord of Rome it nam, / Andtherupon h im hath adresced, / A n d w i t h h i s h a n d f u l o f t e b l e s s e d[...]" (lines 5019—22).

21 "Post hec illi duo eqvum extraxerunt. Statim equum ascendit et versus palaciumequitabat", Dick (above, not. 15) 88/22—24; cf. Oesterley (above, not. 16) 464/5—7 and Herrtage (above, not. 13) 283/11.




Confessio the ungrateful Adrian departs at once for the city, threatening Bar-dus with awful reprisals should he ever reproadi him with the promise thathe had made, and Bardus returns home empty-handed to his wife. For fear ofAdrian he is reluctant to pursue the matter, and the next day he returns withthe ass to his woodcutting only to find that the ape has already gathered sticksfor him. This happens many days in succession until the serpent appears tohim and drops a jewel "mor briht than a cristall" (line 5066) in his path.Delighted with his fortune Bardus takes the jewel home to his wife and in theirrustic innocence they agree that he should seil it. He takes it to a jeweller whowillingly purdiases it from him, but no sooner has he arrived home than hefinds it in his purse. This process repeats itself every time that Bardus tries toseil the jewel, a marvel which he can only attribute to "the vertu of the Ston"(line 5111). At length the emperor Justinian is informed of the matter anddemands that Bardus should teil him the story of the jewel. The poor maninforms him how the brüte beasts served him better than the unkind humanbeing22, and half of Adrian's goods are forthwith awarded to him äs his due.This story is still remembered äs a cautionary tale, "Wherof that every wys-man may / Ensamplen him " (lines 5158 sq.).

In the Gesta Romanorum the rieh man's ingratitude is not revealed imme-diately after his rescue; instead the poor man Gwido returns to his wife, füllof naive expectancy that he will be rewarded, and duly reports the next dayto the rieh man's palace. A porter answers the door and conveys Gwido'smessage to his lord, who denies all knowledge of the business; but Gwido'swife urges him to renewed attempts, and on his third visit to the palace therieh man, enraged by his persistence, comes to the door and beats him sense-less. The wife, chastened by this experience, carries him home on the ass'sback and nurses him to recovery; according to the Innsbruck manuscript ittakes him fully six months to regain his strength23. When he at last returns tohis habitual occupation in the forest, the Hon appears, leading a train of tenasses with loads of valuable merchandise on their backs, and escorts his bene-factor home with them. Then, just äs the lion in Matthew Paris* version hadfawned on the poor man after presenting him with his gift, the lion makesobeisance to Gwido and departs24. Gwido enquires in various places after theowner of the merchandise but none is found. Thus he too becomes a rieh man.Nevertheless he continues to visit the forest to collect wood, and now much thesame events befall him äs in Gower's Confessio: looking up from sharpening

22 "And Bardus tolde him al the cas, / Hou that the worm and ek the beste /[...] / His travail hadden wel aquit; / Bot he whidi hadde a mannes wit / [ . . . ] /Hath nou foryete hou that it stod" (lines 5130—38).

28 Dick (above, not. 15) 89/29 sq.24 "Statim leo cum asinos in t rare vidisset, applausum ei cum capite et cauda fecit et

recessit", Dick (above, not. 15) 90/4 sq.; cf. Herrtage (above, not. 13) 285/12—14and Oesterley (above, not. 16) 464/23—25.



30 Michael Chesnutt

his knife he sees the ape busily breaking branches for him at the top of a tree25,and on yet another visit he encounters the serpent, who presents him with amulti-coloured jewel. Gwido at once takes this precious gift to an expert, whoinstructs him in its extraordinary "virtues" — not least of whidi is its habit ofreturning to its owner unless sold for its füll value26. By exploiting this pro-perty of the jewel Gwido becomes a man of social Standing, and the emperorsends for him and demands to buy the jewel from him. Gwido reluctantlyagrees to the transaction, though not without warning the emperor of the risksinvolved: and sure enough, he finds the jewel back in his treasure ehest the nextmorning. His wife urges him to return the jewel at once to its royal purchaserlest they be thought guilty of fraudulent behaviour27. So it comes about thatthe emperor asks Gwido for the whole history of the jewel; and the ungratefulman, who cannot deny the truth of Gwido's story, is accused by the emperorin words which constitute a more direct formulation of the reproach implicit inBardus' speech to Justinian:

A! wrecdie, a! false begger! loo! vnresonabill bestis äs f>e Hon, £>e ape, and f>eserpent, haue thankid him, and rewardid him his meede for his meede! andt>ou, pat art a resonabill man, hast, for his socouryng f>at he socouryd f>e, nybet him to deth [.. .]28.

The ungrateful villain's title and possessions are awarded to Gwido, and thevillain himself is commanded to be hanged. The Latin texts (but not theMiddle English) add that this judgment was well pleasing to the satraps ofthe realm. The Gesta Romanorum version concludes with an allegorical ex-position (Moralizacio, Moralite, Declaracio) in which the emperor is inter-preted äs a figure of Almighty God, the ungrateful villain äs a figure of Manand the pit äs a figure of worldly perils or occasions of sin: the miraculousjewel is Christ himself, the gift which once given is inalienable29.

Although the extant vernacular texts of Gesta Romanorum would appearto be several decades younger than Gower's Confessio amantis, the version ofthe story contained in the Gesta may reasonably be regarded äs having been

25 The sharpening of the knife is omitted in the Middle English versions, where weare merely told that "he sawe pe Ape, pe whidi he drowe out of f>e pitte, sitting inJ>e top of a tre", Herrtage (above, not. 13) 286/1 sq.; cf. Innsbruck manuscript"Cum vero instrumentum pararet ad scindendum lingna, sursum respexit, viditsymeam, quam de fouea extraxit, in summitate arboris", Dick (above, not. 15)90/10—12. Oesterley's text is corrupt at this point but must derive from a sourcewith the same content äs the Innsbruck manuscript: compare Oesterley (above,not. 16) 464/29 sq. with Dick (above, not. 15) 90/10 sq., and Oesterley 464/33 sq.with Dick 90/15 sq.

2e The narrative in Oesterley's text is obscured by the omission of this vital expla-nation, which is also left inexplicit in Gower's Confessio (cf. above, p. 29): compareHerrtage (above, not. 13) 286/20—287/6 and Dick (above, not. 15) 90/29—34 withOesterley (above, not. 16) 464/39—465/1.

27 Oesterley's text (above, not. 16) 465/6, is again abbreviated at this point, thoughthe omission does not in this case affect the internal logic of the story.

28 Herrtage (above, not. 13) 290/8—12; cf. Dick (above, not. 15) 91/28—33 andOesterley (above, not. 16) 465/12—16.

29 Oesterley (above, not. 16) 465/20—466/17; Herrtage (above, not. 13) 291—294.




current in England already in the fourteenth Century; this together with theevidence of Gower's work would suggest that the story enjoyed fairly exten-sive circulation at that period. Matthew Paris* account of the tale told byKing Richard the Lionheart might, on the other hand, be interpreted äs eviden-ce of more limited popularity, since the Information given by Matthew (seep. 25 above) does not point beyond the confines of the king's retinue andthe monastic Community at St Albans. There is, however, independent evi-dence that the tale was current before 1200 in circles other than those men-tioned by Matthew, for it is incorporated into a lengthy Anglo-Latin satiricalpoem dating from the years 1179—80. This poem, Speculum stultorum*0, waswritten by Nigel de Longchamps (sometimes incorrectly known äs NigelWireker), an Anglo-Norman ecclesiastic whose family may originally havecome from the Channel Islands. In the earlier part of his life Nigel de Long-champs visited France, presumably in order to study, but nothing eise is heardof him prior to his entering the monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury (thetown where his family had made their home) about the year 1170. Speculumstultorum was composed a decade later, when Nigel would have been ap-proximately fifty years old. The poem is an animal allegory consisting of twoloosely linked parts, the first of which relates how the ass Burnellus goes outinto the world in search of a longer tail and how he attemps to obtain auniversity education and found a religious order; at length, after variousvicissitudes and travels that take him äs far afield äs Salerno and Paris, hereturns against his will to his master Bernardus, a poor man of Cremona. Thesecond part (lines 3561—3900, less than one tenth of the total length of the poem)is a version of the story of the grateful animals and the ungrateful man in whichthe roles of the poor hero and his ass are played by Bernardus and Burnellus31.

A comparison of this text with the versions already analyzed shows thatSpeculum stultorum sometimes agrees with Matthew Paris and sometimes withone or both of the fourteenth-century versions found in Gower and the GestaRomanorum. The setting is still Italian, though not identical with that of anyother version, and the presence of the ass obviously provides a connexion withGower and the Gestay although the ass in fact plays no active part in the storyäs related by Nigel de Longchamps; the same applies to the poor hero's wife,who is only mentioned — together with her three sons — äs a member of thehungry family which Bernardus must support. The name B e r n a r d u s ismanifestly related to Gower's B a r d u s and the ungrateful man is calledD r y a n u s , corresponding to Gower's A d r i a n . The story begins äs in

80 Mozley, J./Raymo, R. (edd.): Nigel de Longdiamps Speculum stultorum (Universityof California Publications: English Studies 18). Berkeley/Los Angeles 1960. Mybiographical Information on the author is taten from the introduction to thisedition.

31 From the name of the ass derives Chaucer's title, "Daun Burnel the Asse" (see"The Nun's Priest's Tale", Canterbury Tales VII, line 3312). Chaucer is also sup-posed to have drawn on Speculum stultorum in his Parlament of Fowls: seeMozley/Raymo (above, not. 30) 8 and 127, not. 51.



32 Michael Chesnutt

Gower, without the Gesta's prehistory of the rieh man and without MatthewParis* reference to the daughter's wedding; but the animals are three innumber, identical with those in the Gesta, and their presence in the pit isannounced already at the beginning of the narrative. On the other hand,Speculum stultorum shares with both Matthew Paris and the Confessio afeature which is missing in the Geste, for the woodcutter blesses himself withthe sign of the Cross in the same way äs Vitalis and Adrian had done in thetexts of Matthew Paris and Gower. Neither Nigel de Longchamps nor MatthewParis agree with the other versions äs to the time of the rescue: according toGower and the Gesta it takes place the same day äs the rieh man's accident,whereas in Matthew it takes place on the second and in Nigel on the fourthday of his captivity. The reward offered by the rieh man — half his goods —is identical with that in Matthew Paris and Gower, but the rescue equipment(vimine contextum funem, line 3613) agrees more closely with Matthew Paristhan with the other versions. Common to Speculum stultorum and Confessioamantis is the comic astonishment of the poor man at the emergence of theanimals from the pit, a sight which makes him think that he is the victim ofdiabolical hallucinations (Speculum, lines 3615 sqq.); on the other hand thereis a point of particular resemblance between Speculum stultorum and MatthewParis in the description of the rieh man's ascent, where Bernardus seizes Dry-anus by the hand — not, however, to express his general satisfaction with theSituation but for the more mundane purpose of preventing Dryanus fromtoppling back into the pit (Rupto fune miser rursum cecidisset ad ima, / Nicito Bernardi dextra tulisset opem, lines 3675 sq.).

The continuation of the story agrees with Confessio amantis and GestaRomanorum in placing the episode of the quarrel between the rieh man andhis rescuer prior to the appearance of the grateful animals with their gifts.Nigel's version may be said to occupy an intermediate position between theother two with respect to the structure and content of the quarrel. The riehAdrian of the Confessio confines himself to psychological methods of intimi-dation, withdrawing his promise äs soon äs he has been rescued and threaten-ing Bardus with reprisals should he protest, whereas a spirit of false optimismon the part of the hero is nurtured for a while in both Speculum stultorum andthe Gesta, only to be rudely dispelled by an act of physical violence (in theGesta he is savagely beaten, in NigePs poem Dryanus sets his dogs upon him).Speculum stultorum and Confessio amantis agree, however, in emphasizing thepoor man's awe of the ungrateful member of the establishment82. His resilienceis greatest in Gower, who sends him back to his woodcutting the very nextday, while Nigel gives him till the fourth day and the Innsbruck Gesta sixmonths to recover from his experiences. The gifts of the three animals arepresented in the same order äs in the Gesta, though the circumstantial detailconcerning the sharpening of the knife is not present in Speculum stultorum,

32 Compare Confessio amantis V, lines 5043—45 with Speculum stultorum lines3691—3700.



The Gratejul Ammais and the Ungrateful Man 33

nor is the ape found at the top of a tree. On the other hand, the lion's giftcorresponds to Matthew Paris rather than the Gesta: it consists of wild game(ferinis / carnibus, lines 3703 sq.) and the fattest stag in the whole herd (Degrege cervorum quod pinguius esse putabat / Abstulit et domino contulit ipsesuo, lines 3707 sq.). On receiving the serpent's jewel Bernardus at once takes itto the jewellers of Cremona, asking äs in the Gesta to know its properties(vires, line 3741), but none have ever seen its like before. At length it is pur-chased from him for three times its weight in gold by a eunudi in the Serviceof the ruler of the city (principis [...] / [...] eunuchus, lines 3751 sq.). Theconclusion agrees alternately with the versions in Gesta Romanorum and theConfessio: when the jewel returns to him Bernardus hastens back to the buyer,with much the same motivation äs is expressed in the Gesta, but the processmerely repeats itself and word of the affair readies the ruler, who summonsBernardus to his presence in the same manner äs Justinian in the Confessio.Bernardus makes a long and bombastic speech, ending with a dramatic oathäs to its truthfulness (falsumque locutus / Si fuero, gladio vel cruce plectarego, lines 3845 sq.), and the ruler imposes a solution which is milder than thehanging of the villain in the Gesta, but which is greeted äs in that text withhis subjects* approval (line 3855): Dryanus must either honour his agreementor spend a further period with the wild animals in the pit. Such, concludesNigel, is the price of ingratitude.

Herrtage, in his notes to the Middle English Gesta Romanorum, made thebold assertion that Gower had borrowed the tale of the grateful animals andthe ungrateful man directly from the Gesta33. This is not the case, äs is evidentfrom the fact that Gower's version sometimes agrees with Matthew Parisand/or Speculum stultorum over against the Gesta (for example in the matterof the names of the chief characters, which are variants of the names occurringin Speculum stultorum). Since both of these parallel texts are demonstrablymuch older than Gesta Romanorum there can be no question of their Standingin a secondary relationship to the latter, and hence no possibility of its havingbeen Gower's source in the present instance. That Gower worked from aliterary model may be inferred from his opening words: "To speke of an un-kinde man,/ I f i n d e hou whilom Adrian" etc. (Confessio V, 4937 sq.; cf.also V, 5165 sq.), and since he is known to have used Speculum stultorumin other connexions it would be tempting to adopt Raymo's view that it wasalso his source for this story34. The foregoing analysis has, however, revealed

38 Herrtage (above, not. 13) 490. The same notion is expressed by Benfey: Pant-sdiatantra l (not. 50 below) 206, who supposes that Gower has subjected the storyto arbitrary alterations.

34 Raymo, R.: Gower's Vox clamantis and the Speculum stultorum. In: ModernLanguage Notes 70 (1955) 315—320; cf. Macaulay 3 (above, not. 12) 502. K. Si-sam, in the anthology Fourteenth Century Verse 8c Prose. Repr. Oxford 1959, 251,expresses the opinion that "Gower probabiy worked on a later modification ofNigePs story"; äs will be seen, this Statement is substantially closer to the truthof the matter.

3 Fabula 21



34 Michael Ckesnutt

at least two instances where Gower agrees with the Gesta Romanorum overagainst Speculum stultorum: the poor hero discovers the rieh man in the pit onthe very day of the accident, and he returns to his wife either immediatelyafter or immediately before the dispute about the reward. Viewed in Isolationneither of these points is decisive, but they may be sufficient to discouragepremature conclusions concerning the internal relationship of the versions. Theissue is complicated by an important factor which has only been touched uponmarginally up to now, and which has to do with the function of a text of thecategory at present under discussion: Matthew Paris relates that King Richardadopted p r a e d i c a t o r i s f o r m a m in order to teil his story, Gower callshis version a tale "of olde ensamplerie" (V, 4935) from which every wise manmay take counsel, and both Nigel de Longchamps and the various versions ofthe Gesta conclude with a moral exposition. There is, in other words, everyreason to suppose that the story not only circulated at the court of the poet-king Richard and in the learned milieux of Canterbury and St Albans but hadalso moved into the e e m p l u m repertoire of the preaching friars, whosemethod of allegorical exposition is indeed fairly represented in the "moraliza-tions" of the Gesta texts with their liberal sprinkling of appropriate scripturalquotations. The similarities and differences between the versions so far con-sidered, äs well äs the literary Status of at least two of the authors concerned(Nigel de Longchamps and Gower), are such äs to indicate a fixed element ofwritten tradition behind the variants: at all events they are not transcriptionsof an uncontaminated oral tradition. If, however, the story did become apreacher's e x e m p l u m it would have been liable to modification äs the re-sult of repeated oral delivery, so that to the literary we must nevertheless addsome kind of oral dimension. The latter is not, on the other hand, to be con-ceived of äs having a direct relation to the mechanics of story-telling amongilliterate members of the Community, for the text variants are the product ofeducated authors whose ultimate source materials will have been written.

Definite proof of the early adoption into the e x e m p l u m repertoire ofthe story of the grateful animals is to be found not in England but in France,where a version occurs äs the twelfth of a series of stories of country folk(exempla de ruralibus) in a collection known äs Compilatio singularis exem-plorum™. This collection is preserved inter alia in a manuscript at Tours andcan be dated, partly on internal evidence and partly on the evidence of itsexternal literary relations, to the end of the thirteenth Century86. In spite of itsFrench provenance, the text of the story is close to the English variants thoughit agrees with no one of them throughout. The setting is again Italian, this

85 Described with selected extracts in Hilka, A.: Neue Beiträge zur Erzählungslitera-tur des Mittelalters. In: Sdilesisdie Gesellsdiaft für vaterländisdie Cultur, 90. Jah-resberidit (1912), IV. Abteilung, c. Sektion für neuere Philologie. Breslau 1913.The story of the grateful animals is printed on p. 21—23; for a German trans-lation see Wesselski, A.: Märdien des Mittelalters. Berlin 1925, 153—155.

36 Hilka (above, not. 35) 2 sq. — For occurrences of the story in later exemplumcollections other than Gesta Romanorum see not. 115 below.



The Grate ful Animals and the Ungrateful Man 35

time at Milan; the rieh man is called A d r i a n u s and the poor man M a -d o s , and the accident occurs when Adrianus, like Vitalis in the version ofMatthew Paris, is preparing for his daughter's wedding. The ass again accom-panies its master to the forest and the rieh man's horse is mentioned, althoughnot for the same comic purpose äs in Gesta Romanorum: when the rieh manfalls into the pit his horse escapes and returns home riderless. Mados discoversAdrianus on the second or third day of his captivity, which constitutes a cor-respondence with Speculum stultorum and Matthew Paris rather than withGower or the Gesta; on the other hand the presence of the animals in the pit,who are the same äs the three animals of Speculum stultorum and the Gesta, isconcealed — äs in Gower's version — until the rescue has commenced, and theaccount continues with the same comic astonishment on the part of the hero äsis found in Gower and the Speculum (Et cum [symia] venisset ad summum,fugit Mados; ergo videns symiam clamauit: Ve michi, dyabolus illusit michi!).The instructions given by Adrianus regarding the Improvisation of the rescueequipment (Colliges cortices et facies ex illis simul ligatis vnam magnamlaqueariam) are a point of contact with Speculum stultorum and MatthewParis, but the ass assists Mados in hauling the prisoners to the surface, which isa feature reminiscent of Gower's version. When the rescue has been completedMados shares his bread with Adrianus, and they return to the latter's house atthe dead of night. A welcome feast similar to that mentioned by MatthewParis is held for the safe return of the master, but Mados holds himself in thebackground and is sent away with a meagre reward. Thus he comes home to hiswife (cf. the versions of Gower and the Gesta at the same point), and he andthe ass take many days to recover from their exertions (In crastino Madosfatigatus de lecto surgere non potuit nee asinus per multos dies). Mention ismade at this juncture of Mados' four sons, a detail corresponding to the threesons of Bernardus in Nigel de Longehamps* poem; but the Compilatio agreesparticularly with Gower and the Gesta in emphasizing the role of the poorman's wife, though its Order of events is different from all other versions atthis stage in the story. Mados takes the serpent's gift home to his wife, tellingher what a splendid pair of leather shoes she will be able to obtain in exchangefor it, but the wife, wiser than he, investigates its value at the exchange andadvises Mados to offer it to the emperor, who is delighted with the jewel andpurchases it all unawares (agnoscens virtutem lapidis) for a hundred pounds.As in Oesterley's text of the Latin Gesta the poor man here is quite ignorant ofhis jewel's magic property of returning87, and he proceeds to invest the em-peror's money in a new house: this may perhaps be a parallel to the EnglishGesta, which informs us that Gwido invested the proceeds of the lion's gift in"tenementys and othir maner of goodis"88. That the Compilatio and GestaRomanorum are indeed related in some special degree is further indicated by

3<f Cf. above, p. 30 and not. 26.58 Herrtage (above, not. 13) 285719 sq. (omitted in the Innsbrudt manuscript, Oester-

ley's text and Add. 9066/Kk. 1.6).



36 Michael Chesnutt

the episode describing the animals' gifts, where Mados, terrified by the sight ofthe lion, climbs into a tree to escape it; but the friendly lion brings him a fatstag to eat (ceruum [. . .] valde pinguem) and the innocent Mados, when thecarcase has been transported home on the ass's back, chops it to pieces withan axe. The mention of the tree and the chopping Instrument undoubtedlyconstitutes a link with the incident of the ape in the (Latin) Gesta™\ on theother hand it will have been noticed that the lion's gift is identical with thatmentioned in Speculum stultorum. That the lion's gift of merchandise is asecondary feature of the Gesta may in fact be demonstrated from the textsthemselves: it disrupts the internal logic of the narrative by removing thehero's motive for returning to the forest, and the redactors therefore feelconstrained to remark that he n e v e r t h e l e s s continued his old practiceof gathering wood: "[...] he was y-maad a rieh man; and sit he vsid f>e wodeäs he dude afor [.. .]"40, cf. the Innsbruck manuscript "Vnde diues est factus.Verumtamen [MS tarnen tarnen] die secunda cum asino ad forestam per-rexit"41.

The concluding episode of the story in the Compilatio begins in the samemanner äs in the Gesta: Mados becomes well acquainted with the emperor onaccount of the jewePs behaviour and complains to him of Adrianus' ingrati-tude. The villain is summoned to court (ad curiam) and accused of havingbroken his promise to give äs great a reward äs was given by the animals —an accusation which perhaps appears somewhat unreasonable, since the chiefmen of the city (principes, corresponding to the judges in Matthew Paris andthe satraps in the Gesta) declare that the serpent's jewel is worth more thaneverything Adrianus possesses. Adrianus at all events denies the whole businessand is challenged to a duel; and when the court proceeds to the edge of awood close to the city (iuxta nemus prope ciuitatem) in Order to witness thecontest, the animals emerge and slay the ungrateful Adrianus. Mados dulyinherits all his goods. This final episode is apparently related to the excursionto the animals' abodes in the version told by Matthew Paris. —

Together with the evidence citcd on p. 34 above, the intricate web of cor-respondences between the version in Compilatio singularis exemplorum andthe various English versions in both Latin and the vernacular would seem tojustify the assumption that the story of the grateful animals was told äs ane x e m p l u m in thirteenth and fourteenth Century England, and thatMatthew Paris had sufficient grounds for causing King Richard I to adoptp r a e d i c a t o r i s f o r m a m for the purpose of reciting it42. Neither thestory äs such nor its exemplary Interpretation was however a European much89 Cf. above, p. 29 sq. and not. 25.40 Herrtage (above, not. 13) 285/20 sq.41 Dick (above, not. 15) 90/9 sq.; contrast Oesterley (above, not. 16) 464/28.42 For a later instance of a monardi telling an animal tale äs an exemplum see the

anecdote of Valdemar Atterdag in the so-called "Magdeburger jEsop" (Holbek,B. [ed.]: ^Esops levned og fahler [Universitets-Jubilaeets danske Samfunds Skrifter403 = Nordisk Institut for Folkedigtnings Skriftserie 1]. Copenhagen 1961—62,2,88).




less an English invention, for it occurs in the famous collection of orientalanimal tales generally known äs Kalila and Dimna, a work whidi throughnumerous translations — all of which can be traced back to an Arabicoriginal of the eighth Century — came to exert considerable influence on thepopulär story repertoire of Europe in medieval and more recent times. Inorder to place the versions so far studied (hereafter referred to collectively ästhe Anglo-French group) in their appropriate historical perspective, it will benecessary to give some attention to the origin and dissemination of Kalila andDimna and to the variants of the story of the grateful animals which appearin some of its older redactions48.

The earliest known text of Kalila and Dimna, the old Syriac version attri-buted to the chorepiscopus Büd, is assigned to the second half of the sixthCentury44. This version does not contain the story of the grateful animals,which made its first appearance in the Arabic version of Abdallah Ibn al-Moqaffa', a writer of Persian origin who was born c. 725 and who was con-verted from Zoroastrianism to Islam45. The version of Ibn al-Moqaffa* pur-ports to be a translation from an earlier Persian (Pehlevi) text which, accord-ing to a highly circumstantial account of the matter, had been translated froma Sanskrit original and brought from India in the middle of the sixth Centuryby the Persian physician Burzöe. Modern scholarship is disposed to accept thegenuineness of this tradition46 and to assume that the Syriac version of Büdwas likewise based on a Pehlevi source, although the Syrian patriarch EbedJesu in a catalogue of Syriac literature compiled c. 1300 asserts that Büd trans-lated Kalila and Dimna "from the Indian"47. A considerable proportion of thematerial in Kalila and Dimna recurs in manuscripts of the Pancatantra, andthe Indian origin of this material is therefore largely undisputed. Later Persianredactors of Kalila and Dimna maintain, however, that a number of items inthe book are of Persian rather than Indian origin: the twelfth Century writerNasralläh remarks that the book consists of sixteen chapters, ten of which were

43 For treatments of the literary history of Kalila and Dimna see inter alia Keith-Falconer, L: Kalilah and Dimnah or the Fahles of Bidpai [...]. Cambridge 1885;Ward, H.: Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in theBritish Museum 2. London 1893, 149—181; and Hertel, J.: Das Pancatantra:seine Gesdiichte und seine Verbreitung. Leipzig/Berlin 1914, eh. 11. There is aBrief survey (not always accurate on matters of detail) in the introduction toBodker, L. (ed.): Christen Nielssen, De Gamle Vijses Exempler oc Hoffsprock(1618) (Universitets-Jubilaeets danske Samfunds Skrifter 356 & 361). Copenhagen1951—53.

44 Ed. and tr. by Schulthess, F.: Kalila und Dimna [...] I. Syrischer Text, II. Über-setzung. Berlin 1911. Cf. Hertel (above, not. 43) 360 and 390 sq., and Baumstark,A.: Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluß der christlich-palästinensischenTexte. Bonn 1922, 124 sq.

45 The editio princeps of this Arabic text is by Sacy, S. de: Calila et Dimna ouFahles de Bidpai en arabe [...]· Pafis l816· For a recent French translation seeMiquel, A.: Ibn al-Muqaffa': Le Livre de Kalila et Dimna (£tudes arabes etislamiques: textes et traductions 1). Paris 1957. The story of the grateful animalsappears on p. 262—265 of Miquel's translation.

48 Cf. Hertel (above, not. 43) 362 sq.47 Cf. Keith-Falconer (above, not. 43) xliii; Hertel (above, not. 43) 390.



38 Michael Chesnutt

composed by the Indians while the remainder were added by the Persians,and the author of the late sixteenth Century 'lyär-i-dänish ("The Touchstoneof Wisdom", a revision of an earlier Persian redaction itself dependent on thework of Na$ralläh) identifies the story of the grateful animals äs one of thelatter group48. Both of these Statements are emphatically denied by JohannesHertel49, who shows inter alia that the story of the grateful animals is ofextensive occurrence in India and that it was from an early date associatedwith the Pancatantra™. It is nevertheless conceivable that the extant texts ofPancatantra in India and of Kalila and Dimna in the Middle East are theproduct of dissemination in two directions. The absence of the tale of thegrateful animals from the Syriac version of Büd, whether or not the latter wastranslated directly from Sanskrit, might even tend to support the view thatthe story was added to the Pancatantra l Kalila cycle not in India but in Persia,the home of the translator Ibn al-Moqaffac whose Arabic version provides theearliest evidence of its inclusion in that cycle51.

The work of Ibn al-Moqaffa* achieved great popularity and was copied intoan immense number of manuscripts, a fact which goes some way to explainingthe inadequacy of existing editions and translations. Andri Miquel's trans-lation from 1957, the most recent known to the present writer, is based on anedition by E. 'Azzäm of an Istanbul manuscript dated to the year 1221. Thelatter edition is characterized in the handbooks äs the best edition of the Arabictext to date52, but a comparison with other versions known to be derived fromIbn al-Moqaffa* reveals obvious signs of Interpolation and alteration (seebelow, p. 46). These secondary versions include a metrical paraphrase attri-buted to the tenth Century Persian writer Rüdhaki, of which only small frag-ments now remain58; a younger Syriac version preserved in a composite

48 Sacy, S. de: Livre de Calila et Dimna, traduit en persan par Abou'lmaali Nasr-allah fils de Mohammed fils d'Abd-alhamid, de Gazna. In: Notices et Extraits desManuscrits de la Bibliotheque du Roi 10, l (1818) 113 sq. The observationsof de Sacy are incorrectly paraphrased in Hervieux, L.: Les fabulistes latins:depuis le siecle d'Auguste jusqu'a la fin du moyen age 5 (Jean de Capoue et ses

$). Paris 1899, 9, from which it would appear that Nasralläh was himselfresponsible for identifying the "Persian" chapters, whereas the Identification wasin fact first made by the sixteenth Century reviser.

49 Hertel (above, not. 43) 407.M Hertel (above, not. 43) 371. For Indian versions of the story see Benfey, T.: Pant-

schatantra: fünf Bücher indischer Fabeln, Märchen und Erzählungen. Leipzig 1859,l, 191—199 and 2, 128—132; cf. Hilka: Die Wanderung einer Tiernovelle (not.109 below) 59—63, and Bodker (above, not. 43) 304 num. 75.

51 It may be remarked that the ancient Chinese analogues adduced by Wesselski(above, not. 35) 246, would appear by reason of their Indian connexions to con-nrm the assumption of Far Eastern (Buddhistic) origin for the story; they do not,however, solve the problem of the date and place of its incorporation into theIndo-Arabic literary tradition here under discussion. — For the "Indian theory"in general cf. Bodker (above, not. 43) xx sq. and literature there cited.

52 Cf. Kindlers Literatur Lexikon 4. Zürich 1968, col. 256. Miquel apparently usedthe second printing (Cairo 1941) of the edition by * Azzäm.

53 See ROSS, E. D.: Rudaki and Pseudo-Rudaki. In: Journal of the Royal AsiaticSociety of Great Britain and Ireland (1924) 609—644. Most of the fragments arepreserved in the work of the eleventh Century scholar Asadi.




manuscript (Trinity College, Dublin, MS B.5.32) of which the eldest portionis from the second half of the thirteenth Century, although the work itself maydate from the tenth or eleventh Century54; the Persian translation of Na§rall h,mentioned above, from the first half of the twelfth Century; and a series oftranslations made in Europe between c. 1000 and c. 1275.

The earliest of the European translations is a Greek text of which a frag-ment is preserved in Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS 39755. Thismanuscript, which is probably to be indentified with a supposedly lost codexfrom the Basilian monastery at Grottaferrata (olim MS CryptoferratensisA.33), is written by three hands in a style "strongly reminiscent of manu-scripts written in the Greek monasteries of South Italy"; it may be assignedto the late tenth or the first half of the eleventh Century56. As well s the Vita

Lsopi, fables of J sop and Babrius and various other matter, it contains onthe first seven folios three chapters of Kalila and Dimna corresponding tochapters 18, 15 and 16 of de Sacy's edition of the Arabic. The story ofAaTh 160, chapter 17 in de Sacy, is thus not preserved in this fragment; onthe other hand it is impossible to determine how much of the latter has beenlost, or whether its archetype was complete or incomplete67.

Better known than the Pierpont Morgan Kalila and also quite independentof it58 is the Greek translation entitled Stephanites and Ichnelatesl·*, which wasapparently composed by Symeon Seth for the Byzantine emperor AlexiosKomnenos towards the end of the eleventh Century. It is not without interestthat the author Symeon Seth would seem to have come from Antioch inSyria*0, where the Arabic work of Ibn al-Moqaffa* may be assumed on theevidence of the younger Syriac version to have been circulating in Symeon'slifetime. Stephanites and Ichnelates was the basis of a translation into OldChurch Slavonic61, and a translation into Latin is extant in manuscripts of the

54 This version is translatcd by Keith-Falconer (above, not. 43) from the edition ofWright, W.: The Book of Kalilah and Dimnah, translated from Arabic intoSyriac. Oxford/London 1884. For its date and provenance see Keith-FalconerIvi and lix, and Baumstark (above, not. 44) 284; Bodker's information on thispoint is incorrect (introduction tp De Gamle Vijses Exempler [above, not. 43]xviii). The story of the grateful animals appears on p. 204—207 of Keith-Falconer'stranslation.

55 Husselman, E.: A Fragment of Kalilah and Dimnah: from MS. 397 in the PierpontMorgan Library (Studies and Documents 10). London 1938 (1939).

56 Husselman (above, not. 55) 6.57 Husselman (above, not. 55) 18.58 Husselman (above, not. 55) 19.59 Puntoni, V. (ed.): ÓÔÅÖÁÍÉÔÇÓ ÊÁÉ É×ÍÇËÁÔÇÓ (Pubblicazioni della

Societa asiatica italiana 2). Florence 1889. The story of the grateful animals appearsin eh. XII. This chapter is not included in the oldest recension of the work re-editedby Sj berg, L.-O.: Stephanites und Ichnelates: berlieferungsgeschichte und Text(Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Studia Gracca Upsaliensia 2). Stockholm 1962,

«° Sj berg (above, not. 59) 91 and 94—96.61 Sj berg (above, not. 59) 112—114,



40 Michael Chesnutt

fifteenth Century at Budapest and Vienna*2. The Greek work was later broughtto the attention of the Italian reading public in a volume entitled Del governode' regniy which appeared at Ferrara in 1583 and has generally been attributedto Giulio Nuti, the author of a poetic dedication prefaced to the translation;this attribution was already questioned by Emilio Teza in his reprint of 187268,and Sjöberg has recently adduced reasons for identifying the translator äsFrancesco Patrizzi, professor of philosophy at Ferrara 1578—92, who acquiredthe Greek manuscript on which the translation was probably based during avisit to Cyprus in the 1560's and subsequently sold it to the Spanish kingPhilip II64. Symeon Seth's Greek text was again translated into Latin by theJesuit scholar Pierre Poussines in his Specimen sapienti* Indorum veterum**,published at Rome in 1666 äs an appendix to a volume of Byzantine historicalmaterials, and it was first printed in the original language in 1697 by theGerman philologist Sebastian Gottfried Stark.

This Greek redaction, in its füllest form äs published by Puntoni, consistsof three prologues and fifteen chapters. Sjöberg's researches into the manuscripttradition of the work would, however, appear to demonstrate that onlychapters l—7 and chapter 9 represent the original work of Symeon Seth, andthat the remainder of the book was added by a process of successive accretions,the earliest of these consisting in the addition of the prologues in the courseof the twelfth Century and the latest in the addition of chapters 8 and 12—15(including the story of the grateful animals) by the end of the fourteenthCentury*6. It is of particular significance for the spread of Kalila and Dimnainto Western Europe that the prologues would seem to have been added in arecension of the Stephanites prepared under the direction of Eugenius ofPalermo, a prominent official and Student of both Arabic and Greek whoserved at the Norman court in Sicily in the second half of the twelfth Cen-tury67. The Italian associations of the Pierpont Morgan fragment and the evi-dence concerning the circulation of Symeon Seth's version in Sicily place itbeyond reasonable doubt that the Arabic Kalila was known and studied inSouthern Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It is in the nature of thecase impossible to determine how complete a redaction of the Arabic original

ez Hilka, A. (ed.): Beiträge zur lateinisdien Erzählungsliteratur des Mittelalters I—II(Abhandlungen der Gesellsdiaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, N. F. 21, 3). Berlin 1928, II: Eine lateinische Übersetzung dergriechisdien Version des Kalilabudis. The story of the grateful animals appears onp. 150 sq.

M Cf. Hertel (above, not. 43) 402 sq.64 Sjöberg (above, not. 59) 116—120.65 Reprinted in Patrologia graeca 143. Paris 1865, col. 1217—1356.68 Sjöberg (above, not. 59) Part I, di. II, especially p. 59 sq.87 Eugenius is known both äs the author of Greek poems and äs the translator of

Arabic works into Latin. See inter alia Jamison, E.: Admiral Eugenius of Sicily:his Life and Work [...]. London 1957, and (for his connexion with the so-called"recensio Eugeniana" of the book of Symeon Seth) Sjöberg (above, not. 59) 105—110. The foreword to the "recensio Eugeniana" is printed in Puntoni's edition(above, not. 59) VI—IX.



The Grateful Animals and tbe Ungrateful Man 41

was known in Italy at this early date; but since the Pierpont Morgan Fragmentcontains material which was not translated by Symeon Seth (its diapters cor-respond to diapters 13—15 of the Stephanites in its f llest, fourteenth Centuryform), there can be no good reason for assuming that the early Western tradi-tion was restricted to the eight diapters of Symeon's original. The story of thegrateful animals may well have been available in Greek versions at the periodin question, though not in the form of the extant Stephanites manuscripts. Thelatter may nevertheless be taken, for want of better evidence, s a general indi-cation of the shape which the story might have assumed in such versions (seefurther p. 49 below).

To the evidence of the Greek manuscripts of Stephanites and Ichnelates wemay add other evidence of the diffusion of Kalila and Dimna in twelfth Cen-tury Italy. The Novus &sopus of Baldo68 contains a free treatment in leoninehexameters of a total of thirty-five stories mostly drawn from the Kalila cycleand from the JLsopic FabuL· extravagantes; the story of the grateful animalsis the nineteenth of the series69. The author would appear to be Italian and tobelong to the twelfth Century although Liopold Hervieux would place him inthe second half of the thirteenth Century70, a view which was severely andjustifiably criticized by Gaston Paris71. Until 1928 Baldo's work was onlyknown from the Vienna manuscript, an incomplete copy that had been moreor less incompetently edited by £d£lestand du ÌÝðÀ72 and Hervieux78. In thatyear, however, the f ll text was published by Alfons Hilka from the muchsuperior copy in Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek MS 112.

Another Kalila text presumed to have originated in Italy in the twelfthCentury is the Hebrew translation of which the unique but acephalous manu-script is in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. The sixteenth Century Florentinescholar Doni ascribed this translation to a certain Rabbi Joel, who would havebeen a member of one of the Jewish sdiools which flourished in the lower halfof Italy at this period, and Joseph Derenbourg, who edited the Hebrew text in188l74, saw no reason to doubt the correctness of Doni's Information75. RabbiM Hilka (above, not. 62), I: Der Novus Aesopus des Baldo.69 Hilka (above, not. 62) 39 sq. For the sources of Baldo see the parallels listed in

Hilka's introduction, 5—19; also Holbek 2 (above, not. 42) 95 and 180—185.70 Hervieux 5 (above, not. 48) 33.71 Cf. Hilka (above, not. 62) 2; Hertel (above, not. 43) 412. Benfey l (above,

not. 50) 17, places Baldo in the thirteenth Century; but this must be due to a mis-understanding of du ÌÝðÀ, who evidently inclined towards a dating in the twelfth.For du ÌÝðÃ$ edition of Baldo see next note.

72 Poesies inodites du moyen ge pre*c£de*es d'une histoire de la fable Ýsopique. Paris1854, 213—259.

73 Hervieux 5 (above, not. 48) 339—378.74 Fragment d'une traduction h£braique du Livre de Kalilah et Dimn h attribu£e a un

certain R. Joel. In: Deux versions hebra'iques du Livre de Kalilah et Dimnah(Bibliotheque de l'ficole des hautes etudes 49). Paris 1881, 1—309. The story ofthe grateful animals appears in eh. XIV.

75 For the Jewish intellectual Community in Italy and for Doni's ascription to RabbiJoel see Derenbourg: Johannis de Capua Directorium vitae humanae alias Para-bola antiquorum sapientum: Version latine du Livre de Kalilah et Dimnah (Biblio-theque de l'ficole des hautes Etudes 72). Paris 1887—89, XI—XIII.



42 Michael Chesnutt

Joel's translation is not, however, our earliest testimony that the Kalila hadcome to the notice of the learned Jews of Western Europe, for a referencefound in a commentary on the Pentateuch composed by a Jewish rabbi resi-dent at Seville shows that the work was known there at least in name äs muchäs a Century earlier78. Its circulation in the Iberian peninsula is definitelyattested in the thirteenth Century, when it was translated into both Hebrew"rimed prose"77 and the Spanish vernaculars: we possess a Castilian version78

which apparently was composed c. 1250 under the patronage of the royal heirwho later reigned äs Alfonso the Wise (el Sabio), and material from theKalila was also used by Ramon Llull, the Majorcan proselytizer and theolo-gian, in his remarkable Libre de les besties. The latter is preserved äs theseventh book of a much longer Catalan work dating from the end of the1280's and commonly known äs Felix de les meravelles del man79. Behind theCastilian version and that of Rabbi Joel lies an Arabic redaction characterizedby peculiarities reflected only in these two translations80, while the somewhatlater Catalan author, on the evidence of his variant of the story of the gratefulanimals, would seem to have been following a quite different Arabic redactionaffiliated in some way with the source of Baldo's Novus JEsopusP1.

The greatest single landmark in the history of the Kalila cycle in WesternEurope is a Latin translation made in Italy in the second half of the thirteenthCentury from the Hebrew redaction of Rabbi Joel. This text, generallyentitled Directorium vit* human*8*, was the work of Johannes de Capua, a

76 Derenbourg (above, not. 75) VIII—X.77 Derenbourg: Le commencement du Livre de Keliläh et Dimnäh traduit de l'arabe

en h£breu par R. Jacob ben Elazar. In: Deux versions l^bra'iques [...] (above,not. 74) 311—388.

78 Bolufer, J. A. (ed.): La antigua version castellana del Calila y Dimna (Bibliotecaselecta de clasicos espanoles). Madrid 1915. The story of the grateful animalsappears in eh. XV.

19 Rossello, J. (ed.): Felix de les maravelles del mon (Obras de Ramon Lull 3, 1—2).Palma de Mallorca 1903. For the story of the erateful animals in the seventh booksee part l, p. 212—215. Du MeVil quoted LjulPs variant in a fifteenth CenturyFrench translation from the Bibliotheque Nationale ( $ 65 in£dites [above, not.72] footnote on p. 245); he was not, however, aware that the French text was atranslation from the Catalan. For a modern edition of this French translation of thestory see Llinar^s, A. (ed.): Raymond Lulle, Le Livre des betes. Version francaisedu XV« siecle (Bibliotheque fran9aise et romane B3). Paris 1964, 96 and 98.

80 Cf. Hertel (above, not. ^\ 363—365 and 394.81 A unique point of correspondence between Baldo and Llull is the honey offered

to the hero by one of the animals (see p. 44 below). The relationship betweenLlull and his Arabic source has not been clarified, although his indebtedness tothe Kalila tradition was already recognized by K. Hofmann in his pioneer editionof the Catalan text of the seventh book of the Felix: see Ein katalanisches Thier-epos von Ramon Lull (Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologischen Classe derKöniglich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 12, 3). Munich 1871, 240.

82 Edited from early prints by Derenbourg (above, not. 75) and in Hervieux 5 (above,not. 48) 79—337; for the source followed by Hervieux see his introduction p. 30 sq.The edition with parallel German translation by Geissler, F.: Beispiele der altenWeisen des Johann von Capua [...] (Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zuBerlin: Institut für Orientforschung, Veröffentlichung 52). Berlin 1960, contains amere reprint of Derenbourg's text with variants from Hervieux.




converted Jew83 who dedicated his Book to Cardinal Matthasus RubensUrsinus, nephew of Pope Nicholas III and archipresbyter of St Peter's from1278. On the evidence of this dedication Silvestre de Sacy dated the Directo-rium between c. 1263 and 1278, whereas Hervieux would place it a little laterin the Century84. However this may be, the work clearly became populär veryquickly since it was plagiarized already at the beginning of the fourteenthCentury by the Frenchman Raimundus de Biterris, whose Liber de Dina etKalila (completed in 1313) purports to be a translation of the Castilian ver-sion associated with Alfonso the Wise85. The Directorium was printed äs earlyäs 1480 — less than a decade after the first Latin editions of the Gesta Ro-manorum — and a German rendering was printed at about the same timeunder the title of Das Buch der Beispiele (or: Weisheit) der alten Weisen89.The latter publication, whose author, the priest Anthonius von Pforr87, mayperhaps have used an Italian version of Johannes' original88, was followed in1493 by a Spanish translation entitled Exemplario contra los enganos y pe-ligros del mundo, which is itself thought to have been influenced by the Ger-man of von Pforr89 — a circumstance which would be less remarkable thanmight at first be supposed, since the Exemplario was produced at Saragossa bya German printer. After 1500 the translation and adaptation of the Directoriumgathered increasing momentum. A Czech author who died in 1540 has beencredited with such a translation, although the genuineness of the reference inquestion has been doubted90; and in 1548 the Italian Agnolo Firenzuola issuedhis Discorsi degli animali, a reworking of the first part of Kalila and Dimnafor which the Spanish Exemplario would appear to have served äs a source91

and in which the setting is transferred to Italy. Only four years after Firen-zuola's publication the Florentine Anton Francesco Doni, mentioned earlier,produced an independent version in two volumes in which the setting likewiseis Italian; these volumes were separately entitled La moral filosophia del Doni

83 In the prologue he describes himself äs "post tenebrarum olim palpationem ritusiudaici divina sola inspiratione ad firmum et verum statum orthodoxe fidei [revo-catus]", Derenbourg (above, not. 75) 3/1—3.

84 Hervieux 5 (above, not. 48) 12.85 Only the first few diapters are in fact translated from the Castilian version, the

rest being borrowed from Johannes de Capua. Raimundus' work was published inHervieux 5 (above, not. 48) 379—775; for the erroneous nature of Hervieux'sviews on the relationship of the manuscripts cf. Hertel (above, not. 43) 400 sq.,quoting Delisle and G. Paris.

8e Ed. from the Strasbourg manuscript of 1489 and a related print of 1483 in Geiss-ier, F.: Anton von Pforr, Das Budi der Beispiele der alten Weisen [...] l (DeutsdieAkademie der Wissensdiaften zu Berlin: Institut für Orientforscnung, Veröffent-lichung 61). Berlin 1964.

87 Bodker, in his introduction to De Gamle Vijses Exempjer (above, not. 43) xix,wrongly quotes the name äs "Johan v. Pforr".

88 Hertel (above, not. 43) 397 sq. (following Holland and Gödeke).89 Hertel (above, not. 43) 398 (following Benfey).90 Hertel (above, not. 43) 399 sq.; cf. however Edgerton, F.: Genealogical table of the

Fandiatantra. In: Penzer, N. M./Tawney, C. H.: The Ocean of Story [...] 5. Lon-don 1926, 238, not. 16.

91 Keith-Falconer (above, not. 43) Ixxvii.



44 Michael Chesnutt

and Trattati diversi di Sendebar, and the first of them was published inEnglish by Thomas North in 157092. Later still, von Pforr's German Versionwas translated into Danish, Dutch and Icelandic98.

The versions of Kalila and Dimna just described contain the story of thegrateful animals in a somewhat different form from that encountered in themedieval Anglo-French group, although the resemblances are at the same timeso great äs to leave no doubt about the existence of a literary connexion94. Inthe first place there are differences with respect to the identity of the twohuman protagonists: the role of the woodcutter or charcoal burner in theAnglo-French versions is played by a wandering hermit in the Arabic traditionand its direct offshoots (in Baldo's Novtts JEsopus by a hunter), and the role ofthe ungrateful man is played by a goldsmith (Baldo has the vaguer term faber,meaning "craftsman" or "artisan"). Other differences appear with respect tothe number and nature of the grateful animals and their gifts: two of theanimals, the ape and the serpent, are a constant feature of all versions ofKalila and Dimna except that given by Ramon Llull, who has assigned theape's role to a bear; but the grateful ape (or bear) offers food to his rescuer,and the third animal — entirely wanting in Baldo — appears variously äs atiger in the Arabic and Syriac versions, a viper in the Hebrew of Rabbi Joel,a badger in the Castilian Version, a crow in Ramon Llull and a dragon inStephanites and Ichnelates. The gift of food (honey according to Baldo andRamon Llull, fruit according to the other Kalila texts) clearly corresponds tothe lion's gift of wild game in three members of the Anglo-French group,which further confirms that the lion's gift in Gesta Romanorum is a secondaryfeature of the latter95; on the other hand, there is no internal disagreementamong the Anglo-French texts with respect to their most important divergencefrom the Kalila and Dimna tradition, a divergence which lends an entirelydifferent character to the second half of the narrative. In order to clarify thispoint it will be necessary to give a rather detailed summary of the relevantpart of the story äs told in the Kalila.

Directly after the release of the animals and the goldsmith from theircaptivity, the Kalila texts relate how the hermit meets the ape (or bear) and is

92 Keith-Falconer (above, not. 43) Ixxviii sq. North's Book is reprinted by Jacobs, J.:The Earliest English Version of the Fahles of Bidpai [...]· London 1888.

93 The Danish translation of 1618 is reprinted by B0dker f above, not. 43); the Dutchtranslation of 1623 (by Zacharias Heyns) is described by Keith-Falconer (above,not. 43) Ixxvi. Fpr the unpublished Icelandic translation see Sveinsson, E. 0.:Verzeichnis isländischer Märchenvarianten (FFC 83). Helsinki 1929, LXIX sq.The lengthy account by Geissler, F.: Die isländischen Handschriften des "Buchesder Beispiele der alten Weisen". In: Fabula 5 (1962) 15—47, advances reasons foridemifying an edition of von Pforr printed in 1578 äs the source of the Icelandictranslation but is of little value in other respects.

94 The following comparison takes no account of Johannes de Capua and his deriva-tives, äs all of these texts are dependent on the twelfth Century Hebrew version ofRabbi Joel.

95 Cf. p. 36 above. For the equation of the mule in Matthew Paris with the stag inSpeculum stultorum and the Compilatio see p. 49 below.




offered delicacies s a token of gratitude. The next event is the hermit's en-counter with the tiger, viper, badger, crow or dragon, who presents him —likewise s a token of gratitude — with jewellery98 belonging to the king'sdaughter, whom the animal has killed and robbed. Baldo, who only has twoanimals, has transferred the gift of jewellery to the serpent and does not specifyunder what circumstances it was obtained. The Spanish versions make theirown changes in order to render the narrative more credible: in the Castilianversion the jewellery is stolen by the ape, for whom the badger Stands guard,but neither here nor in the Catalan version of Ramon Llull is any murdercommitted in the process. The hermit, ignorant of the origin of the preciousgift, speculates that the goldsmith will be able to help him seil it:

S'il est pauvre et ne possede rien, il pourra a tout le moins me rendre le servicede vendre en mon nom ce collier a son juste prix: il gardera une partie de lasomme et me donnera le reste (Arabic version of the Istanbul MS)97.I will arise and go to the goldsmith and deliver these trinkets into bis hands,and he shall seil them and give some of their price to the poor and take a littlefor himself, and I will take a little and get relief from my poverty (Syriacversion)98.

But the goldsmith, recognizing the origin of the hermit's new-found possession,hastens to the king thinking to have discovered the identity of the princess'smurderer; and the king, thus informed, impulsively gives Orders for the sup-posed culprit to be beaten and put to death. It may be noted here that in theArabic and Syriac versions the hermit is ordered to be crucified: this obviouslyoriental motif is retained in Baldo (although only mentioned there in connex-ion with the concluding punishment of the villain) but replaced by hangingin the Hebrew of Rabbi Joel", while the circumstantial details have beenmore or less obscured in Ramon Llull and in the extant Greek text of Ste-phanites and Ichnelates. It is also of interest that in the Syriac version theungrateful goldsmith is admitted to the king's palace by the porter, a characteralready famili r to us from the Gesta Romanorum. It would be natural toregard this last-mentioned correspondence s accidental, particularly in view

98 The terms used in the texts are a curious combination of the vague and the specific:"bijoux, collier" (Arabic, Istanbul MS tr. by Miquel [above, not. 45]); "trinkets,gold" (Syriac tr. by Keith-Falconer [above, not. 43]); "gemmis auroque meraco /Ornatum sertum", also "diadema" (Baldo [above, not. 68]); "les anneaux et laparure" (Rabbi Joel tr. by Derenbourg [above, not. 74]), cf. "corona et iocalibus"(Johannes de Capua [above, not. 82]); "guarnimentos de oro e de piedras pres9io-sas" (Castilian [above, not. 78]); "garlanda" (Ramon Llull [above, not. 79]);êüóìéá (Stephanites and Ichnelates [above, not. 59]), "paramenta" (Latin trans-lation of the latter in Budapest MS of the fifteenth Century [above, not. 62]).

91 Miquel (above, not. 45) 263.88 Keith-Falconer (above, not. 43) 206. The corresponding passage is corrupt in Rabbi

Joel's Hebrew and in Johannes de Capua's rendering of the latter (cf. Derenbourg[above, not. 75] 298 not. 2) — the Hebrew translator may perhaps have wished tosuppress the materialistic aspect pf his Arabic source. Tne passage is better pre-served in ehe Castilian version; in Baldo (above, not. 68), Ramon Llull (above,not. 79) and Stephanites and Ichnelates (above, not. 59) it is omitted.

19 Cf. Hilka (above, not. 62) 14.



46 Michael Cbesnutt

of the occurrence of porters äs stock figures in medieval romance, were it notfor the evident reminiscence of another feature from the oriental tradition,namely the execution motif, not only in the Gesta but also in Speculum stulto-rum. Bernardus in the latter text swears to his own truthfulness by demandingto be run through or c r u c i f i e d should his story prove false (cf. p. 33above). Gesta Romanorum is alone, however, in punishing the ungrateful manby execution after the oriental manner (though not by the more barbarousoriental technique); in the Compilatio his death occurs by poetic rather thanroyal justice, and in the other Anglo-French variants he survives99».

Only at this point does the serpent make a reappearance in the Kalila andDimna recension of the story. The hermit cries out bitterly äs he is draggedthrough the streets and the serpent, perceiving his distress, resorts to a stra-tagem to save him: he bites and poisons the king's son, who is left for deaduntil it is revealed to him that only the unjustly accused hermit can save him.The hermit is brought to the palace, heals the boy by laying his hands on himand teils the true story of his misfortune; the king provides him with a fittingreward and the goldsmith is put to death instead. It should be pointed outthat the motif of the serpent's stratagem is entirely omitted by Baldo (whohas already provided the serpent with a function in the story), whereas it iselaborated in the Arabic text of the Istanbul manuscript; in the latter theprince is visited in his sleep by a fairy, who is none other than the serpent'ssister and who has instructed the serpent in how he should proceed. That thissomewhat ridiculous passage is an Interpolation is quite obvious from the factthat the serpent supplies the hermit with an antidote against the poisonousbite, for this antidote is never put to use — instead the hermit cures the boyby the laying on of hands, i.e. by the same means äs in the Syriac, Hebrew,Castilian and Greek versions100. The Istanbul text thus represents the originalof Ibn al-Moqaffae less faithfully than the early Western translations. On theother hand it preserves the oriental moral in uncontaminated form: the wiseruler should not be deceived by outward appearances, but should judge bothmen and beasts according to their deserts.

It ought now to be possible to identify some of the processes whereby thisoriginally oriental story has been reformed in Western European tradition.The motif of the serpent's stratagem has been dropped and the gift of the

For the analogy between Gesta Romanorum and the oriental tradition with regardto the execution see Hilka: Die Wanderung [...] (not. 109 below) 73.

100 De Sacy's Arabic text (above, not. 48) would appear to represent an attempt atrationalization of this unmotivated addition in the Istanbul version: the fairysister is deleted and the hermit administers the antidote to the boy, proclaiming tothe king that he will not indulge in the recitation of magic formulae (Deren-bourg [above, not. 75] 299 not. 3). Ramon Llull's version (above, not. 79) pre-serves the princess from death only to make her the victim of the poisonous bite;here too tnere is an antidote whicn is put to use, there is no fairy sister, and allmention of the laying on of hands has been suppressed.




jewel transferred to the serpent101; the miraculous property of the jewel hasbeen substituted for the theft motif; and while the figure of the ape has gene-rally been retained, the third animal, now functionally redundant, has beenmetamorphosed into a Hon or — äs is more logical — eliminated. The firstand last of these changes have already been effectuated in Baldo's verse para-phrase of the Kalila, whereas the second is a distinguishing feature of theAnglo-Frendi group of texts. The latter exhibit a fairly large number of motifsnot occurring in the older Eastern tradition äs surveyed above, the most im-portant being the following:

1. The ungrateful man is identified äs a ridi man from an Italian city.2. The poor hero is identified äs a woodcutter with a wife and family.3. The hero is accompanied to the forest by an ass.4. The ungrateful man offers half his goods for his deliverance.5. A lion is introduced into the group of trapped animals.6. The serpent offers the hero a miraculously returning jewel.

Not all of these motifs appear in all five members of the Anglo-Frendi group,but the degree of detailed correspondence between the texts is such that weare justified in postulating a common, written source on which they are allultimately dependent and in which the above-mentioned alterations of theKalila story had been carried out. This source would seem likely, on the evi-dence of the two apparent relics of the oriental tradition which have beenfound in more or less undisguised form in Gesta Romanorum (namely thefigure of the porter and the punishment of the villain by execution), to havecontained these two relict motifs in addition to the six characteristicallyWestern features just mentioned. The particular character of the e x e m p l u mtradition, in which oral recitation alternated with the composition and circu-lation of written texts (see p. 34 above), makes it impossible to construct astemma illustrating the relationship between the five variants, for the Situationmust have been analogous to that described by Sjöberg in connexion with themanuscripts of Stephanites and Ichnelates:

Wir müssen [. ..] mit absiditlidien Bearbeitungen, wie Kontaminationen [. . .]redinen. Darüber hinaus müssen wir audi die mehr oder weniger absiditlidienBearbeitungen berücksichtigen, die die Sdireiber vornehmen, wenn sie durdikleinere eigene Zusätze eine Erzählung verdeutlidien wollen. Eine soldie Er-sdieinung ist durdiaus gewöhnlidi, wenn es sidi um Texte populären Inhaltshandelt. Endlidi gilt es audi festzuhalten, daß Fabeln und andere Gesdiiditengewiß audi mündlidi tradiert worden sind [...] und daß der Sdireiber sididarum mitunter als eine Art Besserwisser aufspielen wollte102.

101 According to the eighteenth Century English sdiolar Thomas Warton, the Arabsconsidered "serpents, either from the brightness of their eyes, or because theyinhabit the cavities of the earth" to have "a natural or occult connection with pre-cious stones" (Warton, T.: History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to theClose of the Sixteenth Century l, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt. London 1871, 266).Warton's observation, whidi was set forth in his commentary on a related story inGesta Romanorum (eh. 156 in the Innsbruck MS; cf. p. 55 and not. 125 below)might, if correct, have some bearing on this first phase in the remodelling of theKalila story.

101 Sjöberg (above, not. 59) 63.



48 Michael Chesnutt

It would nevertheless seem probable that Speculum stultorumt which is theoldest member of the group, is an independent witness to the Contents of thesource inasmuch äs it does not have the explicit relics of the oriental traditionpreserved in the Gesta Romanorum but only an indirect reminiscence of oneof them, and therefore cannot — if the relics are correctly identified — itselfbe the source used by the Gesta. Moreover, it can be seen that the other threemembers of the group are less intimately related with Speculum stultorum thanthey are with the Gesta, which on the whole would make it less likely thattheir source is to be found in the Anglo-Latin poem. On the basis of theseassumptions, which the nature of the material unfortunately makes it im-possible to test, we might explain instances of agreement between the Speculumand one or more of the other four variants äs due to derivation from thecommon source, which would then have included these elements in addition tothe material already discussed:

1. The name Adrianus.2. The Sign of the Cross motif.3. The hero's momentary belief that he is the victim of hallucinations.4. The hero seizes the ungrateful man by the hand.5. The Hon presents the hero with a stag and the ape presents him with firewood.6. Public acclaim of the ruler's just decision.

Gesta Romanorum and the Compilatio represent a secondary developmentof the tradition, a development which is immediately identifiable by the motifsof the rieh man's horse, the hero's axe and the treetop (see p. 35 sq. above), andin which the hero's wife has been assigned a real role to play in the proceed-ings; Gower's Confessio amantis is associated with this group by the empha-sis which it likewise places on the role of the wife; and the Compilatio andConfessio form a sub-group of their own, particularly in respect of the struc-ture of the introductory episode where all mention of the trapped animals issuppressed until the hero begins his rescue attempt. A point of cross-fertiliza-tion between Gower and the Gesta may be the accusation laid against therieh man, where it is emphasized that the brüte beasts had more natural under-standing than he (see p. 29); these two texts also locate the action at Rome,whereas the Compilatio locates it at Milan. On the other hand the Compilatiohas a divergent name for one of the main characters but the Gesta for both(Mados: Guy/Gwido, Adrianus: Lenticulus/Ingratus), and the Gesta hasfurther changed the nature of the lion's gift, thereby creating an illogicality inthe narrative. Gower, however, has deleted the Hon altogether and theCompilatio has apparently reversed the Order in which the first two animalspresent their gifts.

Matthew Paris' Version has its own special features, doubtless due to thecircumstance of its being handed down in the internal tradition of the mo-nastery at St Albans108: the rieh man has yet another name (Vitalis), the hero

108 The word "nobis" in the marginal note quoted on p. 25 above is to be construedäs a reference to the community at St Albans rather than to Matthew Paris him-self; cf. Vaughan (above, not. 5) 2.




is not named at all, the setting is Venice and so forth. Perhaps the most signi-ficant variations are those which affect the structure and tone of the story: theepisodes of the quarrel with the rieh man and the animals' gifts are in theopposite order to that found in all other Anglo-French versions, and there isno reference to the magic property of the jewel. This last-mentioned differencematerially alters the conclusion, where the judges are not motivated by theirown experience of the supernatural but by the mere inspection of evidence laidbefore them. It is more satisfactory to explain these variations s the result ofa monastic inclination to rationalize the material than to suppose that thesource behind Matthew Paris was unlike the other members of the Anglo-French group. Certainly there are points of contact with the latter which mightindicate a genetic relationship of some sort: the motif of the fawning animalsconstitutes a link with the Gesta and the mention of the daughter's weddingwith the Compilatio, and in the light of this we may perhaps be justified inregarding the poor man's supper s a variant of the incident in the Compilatiowhere the protagonists share Mados* bread after the rescue (see p. 26 and 35).It would also seem defensible to Interpret the lion's gift of a young mule s aconfused recollection of the ass and the stag encountered elsewhere in thetradition.

We may now enquire into the sources of some of the motifs characterizingthe Anglo-French versions of the story. The motif of the returning jewel hasbeen associated by Raymo with medieval Irish tradition, but though self-returning objects are numtrous there the jewel would not seem to be one ofthem104. The villain's offer of half his goods may perhaps be seen s a reflec-tion of the oriental tradition in which the hero anticipates a share of the profitsfrom selling the jewe!104a. As for the introduction of a Hon s the third animal,the only possible source in the literary tradition of the Kalila would appearto occur in the extant Greek translation, which specifies that the pit had beendug in order to catch a lion (ôïõ èçñåàóáé ëÝïíôá), and which has three ani-mals of which two — the dragon (äñÜêùí) and the serpent (üöéò) — are noteasily distinguishable from each other. The appearance of the lion might inother words be due to an attempt at dissimilation of the triad ape-dragon-serpent in the form of the story on which the common source of the Anglo-French group was modelled; conversely, the reduction to two animals (ape

104 Cf. Mozley/Raymo (above, not. 30) 5; Cross, T. Peete: Motif-Index of Early IrishLiterature (Indiana University Publications: Folklore Series 7). Bloomington 1952,169; and Thompson, S.: Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, revised and enlargededition, 2. Copenhagen 1956, 280—282, where various international parallels arequoted under the subdivisions of motif D 1602. The only apparently relevantexample in Thompson is from India (D 1602.17.1; the cross-reference to the Irishindex under D 1602.17 is erroneous).

1C4°Cf. the Arabic and Syriac passages quoted on p. 45. The motif of "half shares" is ofcourse too common for any confidence to be placed in this Suggestion; and for thesame reason we must redton with the possibility that some Kalila texts displayedthis motif in a more explicit form than anything found in the versions nowknown to us.

4 Fabula 21



50 Michael Chesnutt

and serpent) in Baldo's Novus &sopus might be due to syncretism äs anopposite solution to the same fundamental problem105.

The hypothesis that Baldo's source (or its antecedent) may have bornesome resemblance to the extant Greek translation of the Kalila presents noparticular historical problem, for it has long been thought that there might bea Greek background to this compilation of material from the Arabic and^Esopic traditions, and Baldo's text actually contains a number of Greekloanwords108; it is noteworthy in this connexion that the Pierpont Morganmanuscript discussed earlier (p. 39) attests the combination more than a Cen-tury before Baldo of materials of the very type on which he drew107. Arethere, however, any grounds for supposing that there is a similar Greek back-ground to the common source of the Anglo-French variants? A rather curiouspoint which would seem to have relevance in this connexion is the name-formB a r d u s applied to the hero in Gower's Confessio amantis beside the formsB e r n a r d u s in Speculum stultorum and M a d o s in the French Compila-tio. As was shown above, one of the motifs distinguishing the Anglo-Frenchgroup from the antecedent Eastern tradition is the ass who bears the hero'sburdens. The literary structure of Speculum stultorum clearly Supports theview that this ass figured in the common source postulated for the group, forit is difficult to see what other rational grounds Nigel de Longchamps couldhave had for extending his beast allegory, which occupies most of the poemand features the ass äs its principal character, with the exemplary story of thegrateful animals in which the ass (in his version) plays no part whatsoever.Now the ass is a favourite character in Graeco-Roman fables108, and the Greeknoun is a generic term signifying a beast of bürden; the name B a r -d u s in Gower's Confessio might therefore indicate that the ass had becomeattached to the story in an at least partially Greek milieu, and that in thecommon source of the Anglo-French group its owner — the hero of the storyproper — had acquired a name which was no more than a Latinized transcrip-tion of the Greek noun. It is not without interest that Hilka, the only scholar

105 The Substitution of a Hon for some other animal may have been anticipated inversions of the Kalila no longer known (cf. the previous note). Possible evidencein this direction is the occurrence of the Hon in isolated analogues sudi äs theSwahili oral variant identified by Köhler (cf. Bplte, J. [ed.]: Kleinere Schriften vonReinhold Köhler 1. Weimar 1898, 519, reprinting a review first published in Göt-tinger gelehrte Anzeigen 1870); but local zoology would presumably also be a suffi-cient explanation here.

loe Hilka (above, not. 62) 2 not. 3.107 The significance of this point has evidently escaped the attention of Siöberg, who

bases his explanation of the textual history of Stephanites and Ichnelates on theassumption that this Greek rendering of the Kalila was originally intended for anaristocratic audience, and that its incorporation in populär collections togetherwith works such äs the fables of jEsop only occurred later (Sjöbere [above, not. 59]eh. IV, especially p. 110). Sjöberg's view may be valid for the translation ofSymeon Seth, but it cannot apply to the literary history of the Kalila in the Greek-speaking world generally.

108 Cf. Wienert, W.: Die Typen der griechisch-römischen Fabel (FFC 56). Helsinki1925, index s.v. "Esel".




previously to have studied the story of the grateful animals against the back-ground of the Compilatio äs well äs the other, more familiär variants109, re-marked that the name-form B a r d u s — like D r y a n u s / A d r i a n u s /A d r i a n in Speculum stultorum, the Compilatio and Confessio amantis —was probably "Byzantine"110; this represented a revision of the opinion pre-viously expressed in Hilka's own edition of extracts from the Compilatio,where the form B a r d u s had been labelled "corrupt"111. In fact it may bemore original, in which case Nigel de Longchamps* B e r n a r d u s would bea hyper-correct form due to false emendation on the part of this author.

We are now in a position to make some educated guesses äs to the prehistoryof the Anglo-Frendi group. The common source assumed for the latter musthave been written in Latin and have come into existence prior to 1179/80, thedate at which Speculum stultorum was composed. This source would seem tohave drawn on some kind of Graeco-Latin tradition in its turn dependent onthe Arabic Kalila and Dimna. The explanation of the name B a r d u s ten-tatively advanced above at once leads to a more exact localization of thistradition, for it is obvious that such a name-form could only have arisen inthe manner suggested in a context where the Greek and Latin languages wereread and written and where the Kalila had come into productive contact withthe genre of the Grseco-Roman fable; that a text written in Greek played somepart in the development of the tradition is a corollary to be drawn from thefacts of language history, since the change of initial b to v in Greek is knownto be pre-medieval. These considerations alone would lead us to Italy andmore specifically to the Norman kingdom of Sicily, for Arabic äs well äsGreek and Latin literary culture flourished side by side there in the twelfthCentury, and the evidence of the recensio Eugeniana (see p. 40 above) posi-tively shows that both Greek and Arabic versions of the Kalila were in circu-lation at the court of Palermo. Sicily was, moreover, a centre with whichtwelfth Century English intellectuals and administrators had lively intercourse.Prominent examples from the earlier part of the Century are Robert of Crick-lade and Adelard of Bath, who both visited Italy and Sicily in pursuit of theirscholarly interests; Adelard travelled even further afield, to Greece and AsiaMinor, and translations of Arabic texts are attributed to him and his youngercontemporary Robert of ehester. Even more interesting, perhaps, are Robertof Selby and Thomas Brown, who both served at the Sicilian court in the firsthalf of the Century: Brown later became the confidant of Henry II, whosediplomatic intrigues involved him with various Italian cities and whose third

109 Hilka, A.: Die Wanderung einer Tiernovelle (Der undankbare Mensdi und diedankbaren Tiere). In: Mitteilungen der sdilesisdien Gesellsdiaft für Volkskunde 17,l (1915) 58—75.

110 Hilka (above, not. 109) 72. — It need scarcely be added that Raymo's note con-necting Nigel's form "Dryanus" with Late Latin d r y i n u s and Old Englishd r i h t , d r i h t e n (Mozley/Raymo [above, not. 30] 180) is both fanciful andincorrect.

111 Hilka (above, not. 35) 23.



52 Michael Chesnutt

daughter was married to William the Norman, king of Sicily, in 1177. Thereare also other examples of Englishmen in Sicilian service äs late äs the 1180's,postdating the composition of the source of Speculum stultorum112. This sourcewas therefore in all probability identical with, or immediately modelled on,a text brought home by one of these far-travelled Englishmen of the twelfthCentury.

The evidence so far presented and the conclusions to which it leads may beConsolidated under the following five headmgs:

1. The Arabic Kalila and Dimna, containing the old oriental form of thestory of the grateful animals, is known to have been translated into Greekand to have circulated in Southern Italy and Sicily in the twelfth Century. Theexistence of a related Latin version can be postulated on both particular andgeneral grounds.

2. The Anglo-French variants of the story appear all to be based on acommon source; internal correspondences and differences are explicable interms of the e e m p l u m tradition, where oral and literary transmissionstood in a reciprocal relationship to each other. These variants closely resembleKalila and Dimna with the exception of the later episodes, which have under-gone a thorough remodelling: on one point this remodelling is anticipated inthe work of the Italian Baldo.

3. An Italian connexion is supported by the fact that the Anglo-Frenchgroup localizes the story in Italy and exhibits various points of possible con-tact with Graeco-Latin tradition. The earliest variant can be dated with cer-tainty to the last quarter of the twelfth Century.

4. In the light of this it seems probable that the Anglo-French group isdependent on Greek and Latin adaptations of the Kalila made in Sicily notlater than the third quarter of the twelfth Century. These adaptations seem tohave involved a conflation of the oriental and ^Esopic fable traditions, whichwould explain the presence of the hero's ass in the Anglo-French variants113.

5. Since by far the earliest Anglo-French variants are from England, itseems reasonable to suppose that the direct or indirect source of the Anglo-

112 Cf. Poole, A.: From Domesday Book to Magna Carta 1087—1216 (The OxfordHistory of England 3). Oxford 21955, 237, 244 sq. and 330 sqq. with referencesthere cited. — For English clergy in the Sicilian service, and for the Sicilian em-bassy to Henry in connexion with the Anglo-Sicilian royal marriage of 1177, seealso Stubbs, W. (ed.): Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene (Rolls Series 51) 2.London 1869, xcii sq.

115 Two otherwise isolated pieces of evidence may support the view that the intro-duction of the ass into the story was an Italian (originally Sicilian) innovation:the unique manuscript of the translation by the Italian Rabbi Joel contains arubric for an Illustration showing the hero being ridden through the town on anass, although there is no motivation whatever in the Hebrew version of the storyfor an Illustration of this kind (cf. Derenbourg [above, not. 74] 269/18), and inAnton Francesco Doni's adaptation the two chier animal characters of the Kalilaare metamorphosed into an ass and a mule respectively (Keith-Falconer [above,not. 43] Ixxviii).



The Grate ful Animals and the Ungrateful Man 53

French group was brought to England directly from Sicily by a scholar orofficial who had visited the Norman court there.

These results agree with Gaston Paris* theories concerning Baldo's NovusjEsopus114, which Paris believed to be dependent on a lost Latin prose versionof selected stories from Kalila and Dimna. The more precise relationship be-tween this s p i c i l e g i u m , which Paris further believed to be of SouthItalian provenance, and the text here argued to have been brought to Englandfrom Sicily, cannot be established with the help of the existing materials. ALatin paraphrase made in Sicily in the twelfth Century on the basis of someGreek reworking of the Kalila would at all events have been mutually acces-sible to the Italian Baldo and — through the cultural connexions previouslymentioned — to the Anglo-Norman poet Nigel de Longchamps and his suc-cessors115. Such a source would certainly explain the occurrence of apparentlyarbitrary oriental features in texts of the Anglo-French group — the prince'seunuch in Speculum stultorum and the "satraps" in Gesta Romanorum — äswell äs the other, more important oriental and Graeco-Roman motifs alreadydiscussed116. The postulation of an English literary loan from the Kalila tra-dition towards the end of the twelfth Century would also agree in a generalway with the findings of the Swedish Orientalist Stig Wikander, who seestraces of a similar Arabic beast fable both in Saxo Grammaticus and in theIcelandic AuSunar pattr and Gautreks saga. Wikander would explain thesetraces by reference to Baldo's verse paraphrase and to the likelihood of earlyliterary influences from the Kalila tradition in the context of twelfth CenturyFrench humanism117.

114 Quoted by Hilka (above, not. 62) 2 not. l, from Histoire litteVaire de la France 33.115 Here for the sake of completeness may be mentioned (i) a North Italian variant of

our story from the first half of the fourteenth Century, published by Ulrich, J.:Recueil d'exemples en ancien Italien. In: Romania 13 (1884) 49 sq., from a manu-script in the British Library; and (ii) a Spanish variant incorporated into the earlyfifteenth Century "Libro de Exemplos" of Clemente Sandiez, published by deGayangos, P.: Escritores en prosa anteriores [sie] al siglo XV (Biblioteca de auto-res espafioles 51). Madrid 1860, 480 sq. These texts are obviously derived from acommon original, but the story has been so much abbreviated äs to make it diffi-cult to identify the source on which this original was based. It may well have beenan epitome of the version in Speculum stultorum, of which copies circulated quiteextensively on the Continent; it cannot, in spite of the occurrence of a derivativeof Italian provenance, have been dependent upon Baldo. — Krappe, A.: Lessources du "Libro de Exemplos". In: Bulletin hispanique 39 (1937) 30, num. 207,would appear to imply that Clemente Sanchez obtained the story from the GestaRomanorum; he was evidently unaware of the relationship of the Spanish text tothe Italian, which though short is nevertheless far more circumstantial than themere summary of Sanchez, and which displays certain details pointing rather inthe direction of Nigel de Longchamps' version than in that of the Gesta.

118 Note that the introduction of a Hon into the story — perhaps ultimately anoriental motif, cf. above, not. 105 — would have been supported in a Europeancontext by the occurrence of the figure of the grateful Hon in Grasco-Roman fabletradition; for an example from one of the so-called Romulus fables see Holbek 2(above, not. 42) 170 num. 74.

117 Wikander, S.: Fr an indisk djurfabel till isländsk saga. In: Vetenskaps-Societeteni Lund. Ärsbok (1964) 87—114.



54 Mio)ad Chesnutt

All of the views expressed here differ radically, however, from those putforward by Alfons Hilka in his study of the story from 1915. Hilka heretreats Baldo's version äs some kind of unspecified literary offshoot of theKalila118, while the introduction to his edition of Baldo, published thirteenyears later, operates with the less indeterminate but more improbable notionthat the author drew on a Latin oral tradition in prose119; similarly, the Anglo-French accounts of the grateful animals are seen already in 1915 äs the resultof oral transmission from the East, having entered Europe partly with theCrusades and partly äs a consequence of Italian trading connexions with theLevant. The starting-point for these speculations is the assumption thatRichard I had brought the story home with him from his sojourn in Palestine,but the lack of clarity in Hilka's thinking about the subject is revealed whenhe uses the localization of Richard's version at Venice first äs evidence thatthe story had been "westernized" under the influence of the Crusades, andlater (together with the localization of Speculum stultorum at Cremona) äsevidence that it had entered Europe through the Adriatic ports120. Curiouslyenough, the idea that Richard I might have played an active role in the trans-mission of the story to Europe had been considered and rejected by Benfeyover half a Century earlier: his argument, though incorrect in point of detail,is based on the observation of a textual relationship between Matthew Parisand another of the Anglo-French versions121, and it is difficult to understandwhy Hilka, who was fully acquainted with Benfey's work, took no account ofhis opinion in this case. That he did not do so must be due to the very vagueconcept of oral tradition prevalent among scholars of his generation122. Con-temporary thinking about the identification of m ä r c h e n in medieval textsis reflected in the essay on Märdnen im Mittelalter contributed by Johannes

118 "Eine merkwürdige poetisdie Nadiahmung von Kalilah-we Dimnah besitzen wirim N o v u s A e s o p u s des Italieners B a l d o [...], dessen Verhältnis zu denbekannten Rezensionen nodi nicht feststeht" (Hilka [above, not. 109] 65).

119 "[· · ·] eine genauere Prüfung seiner Fassung [... zeigt] daß Baldo einer vielfacheigenartigen, selbständigen, vielleicht mündlichen Überlieferungsquelle in lat. Prosagefolgt ist" fHilka fabove, not. 62] 2).

120 "Es ist ersicntlich, daß [Richard Löwenherz] die Parabel in Palästina vernommen,daß sie aber unter dem Einfluß der Kreuzzüge ein abendländisches Gewand erhal-ten hat [...]"> Hilka (above, not. 109) 67; "Wenn [...] O b e r i t a l i e n(Venedig, Cremona) zur Lokalisierung der Geschichte dient, so ist dies gewiß niditzufällig, sondern beweist meines Eracntens, daß bei dem Wandern des Motivs vonMund zu Mund infolge des Handelsverkehrs vom Orient her der östliche HafenItaliens in gleidier Weise wie vorher und zunädist der östliche Hafen des Grie-chenreiches, das alte B y z a n z , eine hervorragende Rolle gespielt hat" (ibid.69 sq.).121 "Sdion 1195 ward dieses Märdien von Richard Löwenherz öffentlich erzählt [...],jedoch in einer Fassung, die, wie mir scheint, nur eine Verstümmelung und Ent-stellung der Form ist, welche es in den Gesta Roman [orum] hat, keineswegs aber,wie man nach Richard's längerm Aufenthalte im Orient auf den ersten Anblickvermuthen möchte, unmittelbar aus dem Orient stammt" (Benfey l [above, not. 50]204 sq.).

122 See for example Krappe, A.: The Science of Folklore. Repr. London 1962, 10 sq.for the notion of "historical variants" of folktales in medieval sources.



The Gratejid Animals and the Ungrateful Man 55

Bolte to the fourth volume of Bolte-Polivka's Anmerkungen zu den Kinder-und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm; here, however, the story of the gratefulanimals is only mentioned äs one of the items in Gesta Romanorum whichm a y have derived from oral tradition128, a much more cautious opinion thanthat expressed by Hilka.

The occurrence of the story in modern folk tradition is a topic requiringseparate discussion. Here it may be briefly stated that occasional instances inEuropean oral story-telling should almost certainly be ascribed to the literaryinfluence of Gesta Romanorum or of von Pforr's translation of the Directo-rium vit* human*1*4. In the Enzyklopädie des Märchens 3,2—3 (1980) 299—305I shall deal not only with the folk variants but also with certain early literaryreflexes of the medieval European e e m p l u m. The latter include two shorterpieces in the Gesta collection itself (chapters 18 and 156 in the Innsbruck manu-script)125, äs well äs a Swiss German versification from the fifteenth Century126

and an early Modern Icelandic prose redaction127; both of these last-mentionedversions can be shown to be derived from the Gesta. German authors of the six-teenth and seventeenth centuries display their familiarity with the Version ofvon Pforr and, more surprisingly at first sight, with that of Matthew Paris128,whose chronicle was printed in 1571 by the English archbishop Matthew Parkerin an edition which was subsequently reissued on the Continent. Thus the literarypedigree of the story can be followed without significant Interruption over thegreater part of a millennium, from the compilation of Kalila and Dimna in theremote East to the publications of clerical scholars in Western Europe bothbefore and after the Reformation.

125 Cf. Bolte, J./Polivka, G.: Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärdien derBrüder Grimm 4. Leipzig 1930, 136 and 139 sq.

124 Cf. Benfey l (above, not. 50) 207.125 Dick (above, not. 15) 17 and 127 sq.; Oesterley (above, not. 16) 435 sq. and 456 sq.;

Herrtage (above, not. 13) 17—19 (MS Harl. 7333).126 Baeditold, J.: Einundzwanzig Fabeln, Sdiwänke und Erzählungen des XV. Jahr-

hunderts. In: Germania [Vienna] 33 = N.R. 21 (1888) 276—279.127 Cf. Sveinsson (above, not. 93) l, Type 166 (recte 160).128 Cf. Hilka (above, not. 109) 64 not. 7 (Hans Sachs), 65 (Kirchhof's Wendunmuth)

and 74 (Masenius* Palaestra Dramatica). Also Wesselski, A.: Versuch einer Theoriedes Märchens (Prager deutsche Studien 45). Reichenberg i. B. 1931, 83 (Forner's RexHebronensis, Kybler's Wunder-Spiegel and Strobl's Ovum Paschale). To thesereferences may now be added the material collected in Moser-Rath, E. (ed.):Predigtmärlein der Barockzeit (Supplement-Serie zu Fabula A 5). Berlin 1964,278 sq. and 471, num. 125.

